Brivido

@OBEler Yes, the dosage was too high. It was 250μg of pure LSD. It was my first serious psychedelic trip and I didn't have enough experience for such a high dose, it felt like being sent to hyperspace into a spaceship and having no clue on how to use the control panel. Probably, the best description of insanity is having the Infinite power of God's imagination and not being able to control it. At the peak of the experience, I could see the infinite faces of consciousness everywhere, but what freaked me out the most was understanding that there is no difference between reality and imagination and between self and other. I simply wasn't ready for such insights and I ended up into a psychosis that I can only describe as an infinite and eternal "Scream", as in Munch's painting, that was my ego's reaction to the truth of non-duality. I made the mistake of dosing too high because I didn't research well enough. At that point, I had been studying non-duality for years and I wanted to see what it was all about, I was too reckless and paid a big price. Moreover, after plenty of other trips with mushrooms, I have discovered that my brain is hyper sensitive to psychedelics, 1mg of mushroom is more than enough to consistently send me into deep non-dual states of consciousness. Those 250μg were more like 500/750μg for my brain.

I want to share my experience with kriya yoga so far. I have been practicing for almost three years now. The firs couple of years, I was practicing a simple pranayama, while concentrating on the third eye. I didn't see crazy results, other than experiencing the reality of the chakras. The effects of this meditation are: While meditating, feeling a lot of energy concentrating on the third eye area. My inner vision light up: experiencing mild inner visuals. Night dreams turned to high definition, almost life like. Ability to ear the voice of the characters of my dreams, which it never happened to me before. Kind of freaky. Experiencing premonitions or warnings, while dreaming, about day to day life. (not that common, but it happened more than once) Ability to recognize deep spiritual truths, through the spontaneous activation (feeling of energy) of the third eye. Once I saw that this chakra business wasn't all bullshit, I was hooked and I started to do serious research about kriya yoga. I read all the books that Leo suggests and many more. In the past six months, I have been practicing diligently a complete kriya yoga routine and have seen some serious results: I end my routine with kriya supreme fire and almost invariably I get into a sort of mini samadhi, I lose all point of reference and can't locate myself anymore. It lasts for 10 seconds or so but it's still valuable. While practicing Yoni mudra my brain feels like it's exploding of pleasure. The pleasure per se it's not important, what I think is going on is that the practice is actually rewiring my brain. Sometimes, while practicing, I have really intense visuals, they seem like the beginning of a psychedelic trip, but fade off quickly. In my everyday life, I am way happier overall and I appreciate deeply the beauty of life. Sometimes I get moved by "mundane" and simple things. The main effect that I have noticed is that kriya makes your consciousness cleaner or more "symmetric", it's a slow process but definitely worth the investment because it's an effective way to permanently change your baseline state of consciousness. After a while, you can literally start to feel your brain rewiring itself, I randomly sense a small pleasurable pression in various areas of the brain. I haven't achieved kechari mudra yet, I think that's going to be a game changer and is literally going to light up my brain. I use psychedelics too (LSD, mushrooms and 5-meo-dmt - not a break through dose yet) and I can sense that kriya is going to take me to the same place that the psychedelics take me to, it's just going to take 30 or 40 years of practice to achieve the sort of awakening available through the use of psychedelics. Moreover, I have found that the use of psychedelics and the practice of kriya complement each other in different ways. So as the title says, I hope you don't underestimate the value of kriya yoga. I will keep you posted about my progress.

What follows is a beautiful passage of Ramana Maharshi which is pointing to the fact that the screen of consciousness and the images on the screen are the same thing, which is to say, there is no difference between reality and imagination and therefore reality is absolutely groundless. The ultimate strange loop. The last section of the quote is especially significant. At least, this is my interpretation.

I just want to update on my situation, for anyone else that might have the same issue in the future: Running or any kind of other high intensity sport helps with the release of stored up energy, caused by psychedelics or yoga. After I started running the contractions and the tingling went away and didn't reappear. Everything went back to normal after a couple of weeks. I am pretty sure my 5-MeO-DMT sessions triggered the release of stored up energy and trauma, that was already under way through the practice of kriya yoga. The release of energy through muscles spasms is a common sign of kundalini being activated and helping the evolution of consciousness. 5-MeO-DMT just accelerated the process that I had started through kriya yoga. I went back for one more session of 5-MeO-DMT last weekend and I haven't had anymore contractions and tingling prolonged through my day to day life.

This comment clearly shows that you have misunderstood his teachings, you might have to reared his books. In fact, your comment completely goes against what he actually says in the books.

I love Jed's books, they were my introduction to serious spiritual work. You have to read between the lines, he doesn't talk overtly about love, but it's there. I think the reason he doesn't talk about it openly is because all his books are trying to make you aware of your ego tricks. People might have used the idea of love as just another ego layer. That's what makes his books so beautiful, it just goes against everything that mainstream spirituality teaches. It calls on the bullshit of the spiritual ego.

They get you there. An awakening on psychedelics it's a real awakening. Psychedelics are extremely useful to show you what ego death and divine unione really are, and other profound realizations. The words of every teacher are just empty talk, without direct realization. You can't understand logically what awakening is and that's the problem with most people, they try to get a sort of degree on awakening. Psychedelics can give you the motivation to start a serious meditative practice, because they show you how good is to live without a self. Personally, my awakening through psychedelics have given me the motivation to seriously start practicing kriya yoga. My psychedelic work and my kriya work complement each other. I am 100% sure that all the awakening I had on mushrooms have helped me progress faster on my kriya path and viceversa. In my personal experience, kriya yoga, but you can try any kind of meditative practice which is close to your personality. With kriya yoga, after a couple of years practice, your brain will start rewiring itself, you can actually feel it. Lately, I am able to get into non-dual states of consciousness, for brief periods of time, at the end of my practice. Hopefully, sooner or later that is going to stick. Might have to write a post about my experience about it, in the future.

That's beautiful, perfect symmetry.

@Leo Gura So you have changed your mind about the possibility of achieving a permanent non-dual state of consciousness through psychedelics, like Martin Ball has done?

Hi there, do you practice kriya yoga or kundalini yoga? I am a serious practitioner of kriya yoga and I have been having your same same issues after a couple of 5-meo-dmt non-dual sessions, I suspect that the experiences might have accelerated the awakening of kundalini. Searching online, I have discovered that this phenomena is called "pranotthana", which apparently is a way for the body to get ready for the awakening of kundalini. I have been having involuntary muscle contractions and tingling for over two weeks now, I am pretty sure that my 5-MeO-DMT was pure 5-MeO-DMT, because even at 10mg and 15 mg I had profound experiences, it was like the peak of a mushroom trip, which usually lasts for around 10 minutes for me, continued for over one hour, experiencing the infinite interconnection of the mind of God. I am quite pissed that I can't go back for more God, before I understand what's going on with my body.

This is an extract from "I am that" by Nisargadatta Maharaj: I think this passage sums up @Leo Gura video about nihilism quite well.

This song "speaks" about Shiva (perceiver) and Shakti (perception) uniting together in love. I had one of the deepest enlightenments so far while listening to this song.

I have been reading a lot of comments the past few days, before making up my mind about what has happened. The main issue seems to be that the majority of people that critique and misinterpret Leo's work are not able to distinguish between Absolute Truth and relative truth. This doesn't make much sense to me, because I have always been able to make such a distinction, but the people that come on this forum have various level of development and I can see how a newbie might misunderstand a True spiritual principle like "All fears are illusion". My suggestion is to make a video or a post about the topic of Absolut Truth and relative truth and pin it at the top of the forum, so that it is clearly stated that they are two different things. I have noticed another problem with the spiritual community in general. Spiritual people tend to become crazy and forget how to behave like a normal human being. The main issue is that on the spiritual path you might see things out of this world and if your mind is not malleable enough you might go insane. I wish that people would be able to have a mystical experience or chat with an alien on Friday and then be able to go to work at the office on Monday, as if nothing special as happened. A video along the line of "How not to lose your mind while on the spiritual path" is much needed. Again, some people on this forum have been studying non-duality for years and others are completely new to the path. In my opinion, it has to be stressed more that studying the map of the non-dual territory actually matters, otherwise you might crash hard. Leo, you used to do that in the past way more, now you are promoting psychedelics. Which is fine to me, but promoting psychedelics to a newbie might have negative repercussions. I think you should make clear that before getting serious with psychedelics a newbie should have a clear understanding of non-duality. Personally, before trying any kind of psychedelic I have studied non-duality for five years or even more, and those five years of study have helped me a lot making sense of what I have experienced during my psychedelics session and staying a functional human being. I hope this post is going to help somehow @Leo Gura

I have read Ralston's books, watched many of his videos and contemplated his teaching. In my opinion, he is probably the best teacher at explaining the functioning of the ego-mind and the self. He has helped me understand the ways in which I trick myself like no one else. I have the feeling though that he is somehow holding back on purpose the more mystic aspects of awakening. He doesn't speak overtly of love, interconnection, oneness, beauty etc. This video is one of the few instances in which you can see him almost being moved, for a split second, while talking about Beauty. I guess it makes it more precious since, he almost never does so. I got emotional too, while watching the video for the first time, because I have experienced many times the Beauty that he his pointing to. I understand it's his style of teaching, but do you have any idea why a teacher would chose to hold back on purpose on the more mystical side of awakening? ( I am assuming he actually does)

It's not important how much time per se you spend working, but the quality of the time that you do so. I work for five hours per day (I do creative work), but those five hours are Deep Work. Which means I do nothing else but work for those five hours. I work for one hour, take a little break and then get back to work. There are various strategies that you can apply to do deep work, this is definitely not the only one, but it works for me. No internet, no cell phone, no social media, no distractions. That's why it's called deep work. I highly suggest you to read Cal Newport's book Deep Work. My five hours of work are way more productive of someone that works for 10 hours but is constantly distracted. Most creative people throughout history didn't work for more than 5 or 6 hours: https://podio.com/site/creative-routines After a point there is a diminishing return for your effort.

I am on the verge of launching my first online product, which will be an ebook. I already have a large audience, to which I have offered free content for years, so I hope that finding customers won't be much of a problem. Obviously, I am not going to sell crap, what I am creating is of extreme value. Now, I am not a technical kind of guy and I don't know if selling content directly on WordPress (I have my own website) is something doable, without specific knowledge like hosting videos, servers, handling payments etc. I have found this company which seems to be taking care of everything too technical for 30 dollars per month, seems like a sweet deal to me. For the moment, selling an ebook on WordPress doesn't seem that difficult to set up, but in the future I want to create video courses and using an external company to take care of the technical side of things will make everything easier, I guess. My question is: do you guys suggest to learn how to manage everything on my WordPress site or you think is a good idea to use a company which will make everything easier? Please answer only if you have direct experience selling products online. You input would be greatly appreciated @Leo Gura

Alan Watts made great use of LSD, it appears This video goes well with Leo's last video. Alan Watts was the first teacher that got me into taking spirituality seriously. He makes Buddism, Zen, Induism (basically mysticism) easy to understand. He has a beautiful way of articulating things and uses great analogies. I highly suggest to anyone that is new to non-duality to look into his teaching, even though there are limitations, his ideas are still of great value.

"The correct answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ It’s the extinction of the experiencer." https://www.davidgodman.org/who-am-i-sri-ramana-maharshis-teachings-on-how-to-realise-the-self/ This is probably the most comprensive explanation of self-inquiry you can find online. I highly suggest you to read it. What I see most people get wrong about self-inquiry is the belief that they need to get an answer to the question. The question is just a tool you can use to destroy your ego. Asking yourself ‘Who am I?’ is like using a sword to cut out all the branches of your ego identifications. Since the ego is just an idea, it has to attach itself to exterior objects to have the feeling of existing as a separate entity from reality. Asking yourself ‘Who am I?’ helps you to sever all your ego identifications by realizing that everything you think you are is just an object. The more you sever your ego identifications, the more your state of consciousness changes and the more chances you have to have an enlightenment into your true nature. Previous enlightenment experiences help a lot. Lately, I was practicing self-inquiry before going to sleep and I had to stop: my ego would wake me up in the middle of the night in order not to die. When I woke up I was in a light trippy state. What I am seeing in my own path is that the more you break through "the other side", the easier it gets to get there.

When you become Nothing there is no limit to what you can be.

That's a perfect visual definition of entanglement.

Tim Ferris, he has a massive audience and seems to be way more serious than Joe Rogan about the usage of psychedelics. Alex Grey & Allyson Grey. I would love to see a talk of yours with Ken Wilber, even though he doesn't have a podcast per se.

This interview is quite interesting, if you listened to it with an open mind. I have highlighted the parts relevant to the this thread. 04:28 - 11:20 Darryl Anka describes his first encounter with Bashar and his ship, which is similar to the one in the CNN video. 1:28:50 - 1:33:40 How spaceships can travel to different planets according to Bashar.

If you pay attention, you will find that the meditation sessions in which you tend to get really into the present are the ones in which you are breathing from both nostrils. Breathing alternates spontaneously between left and right nostril. This is the concept of Ida and Pingala. Ida is the interior aspect of consciousness (thinking, left nostril) and pingala (action, right nostril) is the exterior, if you manage to bring both together, you can experience the unity of consciousness (sushumna). When your left nostril is most active, mental activity is bothering your meditation session; when your right nostril is most active, worrying about action is bothering your meditation session. For me, I tend to breath from both nostrils after about 2 hours I woke up and went to the toilet. It's just a concept, but it can be helpful. Try to meditate when you are breathing from both nostrils, you might notice a clear improvement in the quality of your meditation.